At the time of the present invention the publicly accessible wide-area network well-known as the Internet, World Wide Web (WWW), or more simply the Web has demonstrated great success, and continues to grow at a rapid rate. Individuals, businesses, public and private agencies and the like are depending on the Web for quick access to information and for rapid transfers of large amounts of data of all sorts. According to experts and analysts phenomenal growth and development of new Web products is virtually certain to continue.
As is well-known in the art the Web operates as a world-wide network of computers (servers) connected typically over telephone systems, although various other means of connection from individual Web-capable computerized systems may be used, such as ISDN connection, TX Cable links, satellite links and the like.
Web access is provided typically by companies termed Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who take subscriptions from subscribers, which may be individuals, businesses, government agencies and the like. The ISPs provide Web servers with dial-up service to connect the subscribers to the Internet, and the subscribers pay a (usually) monthly fee for the service.
For purposes of illustration of the art and of the present invention an individual subscriber will be assumed to be connected to the Web via an individual PC and a telephone link, although, as indicated above, other connectivity is often used. The subscriber/client is provided on sign-up by an ISP with software to facilitate connection to the Web. The software is, of course, executable on the subscriber's local PC, and upon activation provides dial-up service through a modem and telephone link to the ISPs server.
Typically upon dial up the subscriber is asked to provide identity and a password, allowing the ISP to limit access through their server to those persons or organizations who are paying subscribers. Once the identification is made, connection to the Internet is provided through the ISP's server. After connection the subscriber may continue to use the ISP's systems to link to other Web sites, or may alternatively locally call up other applications to access other sites on the Internet. Other sites include servers belonging to companies who provide cross-referencing a search facilities for Internet sites, which may be individual servers or what are known as Web pages that may exist many to a single server.
A service made available by virtually all ISPs is electronic mail, known popularly as e-mail. With e-mail each subscriber has one or more e-mail addresses which identify post-office locations on a server.
E-mail was originally a means of sending usually relatively short messages to other Internet users. However, with development of ever higher-speed modems, providing faster and faster transfer or ever larger blocks of data, it has become practical to transfer electronic documents of many sorts with e-mail messages. In a typical system electronic documents, typically identified as computer files, are added as attachments to e-mail messages. Such documents may be word-processor files, high resolution images, such as replicas of color photographs, digitally represented voice files and the like. There is no limit to document size. This sort of communication is arguably now the greatest mover of information in existence, and growing rapidly.
Because of the nature of Internet connection, such as through phone links, which are times charged to users, and also because connect time is charged to subscribers by ISPs, full time or even long term connection to the Internet is most often not an option. Such connection would just be prohibitively expensive for most organizations and individuals. Accordingly, e-mail messages and attachments are stored on the ISPs server, and a subscriber accesses the server periodically by dial up to check his/her mailbox for new mail. Typically the ISP software or a locally-based application, such as Microsoft Exchange.TM., handles communication with the ISP server, and facilitates listing of new mail, composing and sending of messages, addition of attachments, and the like.
Provision is always made for a subscriber to manually request access to his/her ISP and to mail service, and many computer applications that make use of the Internet may now be configured to trigger dial up as needed when the application is running. Such application-triggered dial-up typically provides for approval by the subscriber, but may in some cases remember the user ID and password, and provide the connection seamlessly and transparently.
The large amounts of information now being handled over the Internet together with intermittent access as described herein leads to difficulties. One difficulty is that some information is time sensitive, losing value rapidly if not updated and acted upon. An example of such information is changes in stock and commodity prices. Another difficulty is that server capacity, while enormous, is not unlimited, and storage capacity is costly. Because information directed to subscribers is not quickly downloaded, storage capacity has to be commensurately large.
One possible solution to the problem known to the inventor is a system that pages a subscriber when new mail is logged into the subscriber's ISP mailbox. If the subscriber is near his/her computer or computerized equipment, this is an advantage. If not, the service is of little use.
What the present inventor sees as a clear and present need is a system and method that uses paging technology to notify a subscriber's computer, and optionally the subscriber as well, of new mail to be accessed and processed, and further capability for the subscriber's computer to dial up the ISP server upon notification and download the new mail and any attachments. Such a system could optionally be programmed to further process such newly-arrived mail. It is to these and other related objects that embodiments of the present invention are directed.